Crime Risk Data for Patient Safety

Understanding Crime Risk Improves Patient Safety

3/17/2022
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Patient safety initiatives have grown in importance as healthcare has gotten more complex. Many patient safety issues are completely preventable—in fact, in high-income countries, one in 10 patients is harmed while receiving care, and about half of those patient safety issues are preventable.

Healthcare leaders have developed standards and principles to help organizations understand what risks are present in a health system and how to work toward preventing them. But patient safety doesn’t just encompass care given by healthcare providers within a hospital or health system. It also extends to workplace violence and crimes that can occur in or around hospitals. 

Crime Risk and Joint Commission Standards

In 2022, the Joint Commission, which develops standards to help hospitals and healthcare systems reach “zero harm,”  released “R3: Requirement, Rationale, Reference.” a report that includes workplace violence standards for healthcare organizations to follow.

The standards include conducting an annual worksite analysis of workplace violence programs so that it can mitigate safety and security risks based on the analysis. According to the report, a worksite analysis includes “a proactive analysis of the worksite, an investigation of the hospital’s workplace violence incidents, and an analysis of how the program’s policies and procedures, training, education, and environmental design reflect best practices and conform to applicable laws and regulations.”

Crime Risk and High-Reliability Organizations

Similarly, high-reliability principles aim to keep patients, staff, and visitors safe at all times. Hospital and healthcare organizations that consider themselves high reliability organizations (HROs) design standardized systems to help them anticipate problems, uncover them early, and respond quickly to prevent an issue from becoming worse. In practice, that means

Accessing up-to-date crime risk data, which includes assault, robbery, larceny, rape, vandalism, and drug offenses, can help drive operational policies and procedures, including determining the types of security they need to ensure patients, staff, and visitors are safe when entering the premises.

 Learn more about how healthcare systems use CRIMECAST data to make better security decisions.

 

 

What Clients Say

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Brad Reeves
Senior Manager of Asset Protection
Five Below, Inc.

CAP Index is the first tool I turn to when time is of the essence. I can always depend on CAP Index to provide me qualified crime information within a very few minutes that I feel comfortable reviewing with the C-Suite.

Stephen A. Brown, CPP
Director, Corporate Security / Facility Security Officer
Burns & McDonnell

CAP Index data is a vital part of our security decision-making process.

Keith McGlen, CPP, CHPA
Associate Vice President
System Security Services
Memorial Hermann Health System

CRIMECAST® Reports have helped our organization for many years to proactively assess the particular risk for crime surrounding our facilities. The CAP Index® CRIMECSAST Platform is an easy-to-use online service that provides us with the flexibility to share and decentralize crime risk data within our North America business units.

Carlos J. Cortez,
Manager, Global Security Programs,
Kraft Foods, Inc. / Mondelez International

Our property selectors are not discouraged from a site just because it receives a high score. What we do is issue every store – all of them – a security classification. The classification determines how we allocate our security resources to that store.

Claude Verville,
Lowe’s

CAP Index's online platform, CRIMECAST, is great. It is easy to use and quick!

Ken Wieczorek,
Bank of America

In industries where there is high public contact and a customer is coming to our location (such as retail), why would you leave it to chance when planning security when there is an easy, affordable tool? When investing a million dollars on a location, what is this small charge compared to what it may cost you when you get sued?

Jay Beighley,
Nationwide Insurance

CAP Index assessments are a must for anyone engaged in asset protection. The new website is much improved and as important, easy to navigate.

Bruce List,
The Williams Companies

We have been using CAP Index for a few years and include it in our security vulnerability assessments. Highly recommend it.

Dan Yaross
Director, Protective Services
Nationwide Children's Hospital